


Patience is a Virtue

by Emerald Embers (emeraldembers)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-05
Updated: 2010-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-10 23:00:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/105351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeraldembers/pseuds/Emerald%20Embers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're both trapped forever; they might as well make the most of it, if they can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patience is a Virtue

Lucifer wonders if it's mockery at first when Michael pauses in the middle of their fight and looks at him with eyes that aren't filled with hate. He wins that battle, in so far as either of them can win in this place; knocks Michael unconscious and tears him to shreds.

It takes Michael months to piece himself back together and their fights are as normal for a while after that. They can go both ways, though Michael still tends to win - the balance is more comfortable than he expected though. He'd always hoped to win, and it's satisfying to find that he can, perhaps one in every seven attempts. Some decades it's closer to one in six.

He tears Michael from his vessel and rips off his wings before finding himself pausing, wondering at the look on Michael's face, the fact there is no fear in response to his wounds, only a sorrow Lucifer cannot entirely understand.

He rubs his fingers over the stubs where wings once grew and will grow again, watches Michael arch and hiss underneath him at the pain, clawing at his shoulders until there are further tears in Sam Winchester's flesh, and when their fight continues there's a measurable amount more wrestling. When Michael succeeds in tearing him from Sam's flesh, Lucifer feels strangely relieved, almost cleansed, despite it meaning his own vulnerability increasing.

Michael breaks his wings and he screams in agony, kneels and grips Michael's ankles, and he could tear at these but instead he waits, looks up at Michael, submissive in position if not in mind or voice.

Michael looks down at him and touches cold fingers to his jaw, the iridescent blood from his wounded forearms dripping onto Lucifer's thighs. "We can't," Michael says.

Lucifer doesn't entirely know what Michael means, but he does know he disagrees with the sentiment. "We're already being punished," Lucifer says.

Michael punches him seconds before Lucifer pulls his legs out from beneath him, climbs on top of him, and shoves his hand through the soft flesh of Michael's stomach.

He wins again.

.

Lucifer waits for Michael but doesn't heal Sam's form, leaves Sam shattered while he heals his own wings, his own shoulders. He's scarless and perfect, like the day he was made.

Michael comes to him wearing Adam, and Lucifer doesn't bother to roll his eyes. His disdain is clear enough.

"Fight me," Michael orders, and Lucifer remains sitting, even though the ingrained anger of millennia trapped in this place demands justice. It's counterbalanced by the fact he knows this place as home, for all that he loathes it. It's familiar. "Fight me!" Michael repeats, louder, striking him. Lucifer stays where he is. Michael wraps a hand around his neck.

"Do it," He replies. "If it means that much to you. Kill me again."

Michael's hand tightens and Lucifer closes his eyes, waiting.

Michael pulls him to his feet, and even if he'd had words to say, Lucifer would still have been stunned silent when he felt the vessel's lips crush against his own. "We're not allowed this," Michael says when he pulls away, letting Lucifer's neck go.

Lucifer shrugs. "What are we allowed?" He asks, raising his hand to the face Michael wears, narrowing his eyes at the human flesh. "Why haven't you been freed?"

Michael punches him hard enough to shatter the jaw bone and Lucifer ought to step away to heal it in peace, but doesn't. He lets go of Michael's cheek though, energy easier to direct with fingertips than thought. "I should be free," Michael snaps. "I don't belong here! I belong up _there_!"

Lucifer doesn't answer. He knows this chain of thought. He knows it through the core of him, burning him almost empty. His own anger resonates in response to it, stirred rather than cooled by the familiarity.

Michael storms away into the nothingness surrounding them, tearing at Adam's flesh as he goes.

.

Lucifer feels Michael's return when it happens some months later, stays sat facing away from his brother, strangely relaxed at the possibility of another death.

He tenses a little when Michael sits down behind him, freezes outright when he feels Michael's naked back press against his own. Lucifer wonders when they'll talk.

Michael says nothing for a while, just stays back to back with him, but he feels the sobbing when it starts, understands with a bitterness that's had untold ages to dig deep.

"I want to go home," Michael says some time later, when his tears are dry and his back a little straighter, not curved in misery.

"I know," Lucifer replies. "But you can't."

They get to their feet afterwards, fight hard, but without heart. It's a matter of routine now, and when Lucifer loses, it's the better part of two years before he can bear to piece himself together again.

.

When he returns, Michael only half occupies his vessel, picks at the edges as if he can't make up his mind.

Lucifer makes it up for him, tears away the face that is not Michael's, the back that hides his brother's true flesh, the wings and beauty beneath. He knows he is considered the most beautiful of all God's angels, knows it is written in all of history, because he was the highest, the most loved.

Beauty is rarely seen in a mirror, and Lucifer has often wondered how his brothers escape the same note.

"Let me go," Michael says when Lucifer takes his wrists. He doesn't struggle.

"I'm not keeping you here," Lucifer says, watches horror and sorrow brush across Michael's face, the forced acknowledgement that Lucifer had no part in this place. They're both prisoners sent here by their own choices, and neither can help the other escape.

"Why does He forget us?" Michael asks.

Lucifer doesn't know the true answer, but he suspects. "I think you're too generous. I think He knows exactly where we are."

Michael's sobs are quiet, and Lucifer presses his lips once against each of Michael's cheeks, feels the damp of Michael's tears.

"At least you weren't sent here alone," he says, tensing again with anger at the thought of his own loneliness, the madness he was left to develop, left to bring himself out of. Michael would never have to shatter entirely as he did.

"I don't have you," Michael says, pulling his wrists free of Lucifer's grasp and stepping away.

"You would," Lucifer replies. "If you asked for it."

Michael passes a hand over himself, heals and cleanses as he does so, and Lucifer thinks his words ignored. It doesn't matter. Michael can come to his senses or rot here.

Lucifer wishes he could feel so carelessly hateful again.

Michael's hands link on his stomach, drawing Lucifer's attention, the strangeness of prayer. "Please," Michael says.

Lucifer walks closer, wonders why Michael can't meet his eyes for this. "What was that?"

"Please," Michael repeats. "Be with me."

Lucifer closes a hand around Michael's shoulder, nods his head. "I'd appreciate the company. You'll have enough stories to pass a few centuries, I'm sure."

Michael's tense, still. "I wasn't referring to conversation."

He looks up, and Lucifer nods in agreement again, feels Michael's lips press against his, softer this time than they were before. He pushes back until Michael licks at his lips, the sensation unfamiliar and a little jarring.

Michael's eyes narrow, confused and hurt. "You said yes,"

Lucifer finds himself tense but there's no way of hiding the truth. "This isn't the first time you've done this," he says.

Michael's confusion only increases for a moment before changing into surprise and understanding. "This is your first," he says.

The embarrassment he feels at the revelation is all too human and he wishes for a moment to be wearing Sam's skin, so he could at least blame it on borrowed flesh. "I was thrown from Heaven before the idea presented itself."

For the first time in nearly a century, Michael actually smiles. It's painfully beautiful. "Lucifer," he says. "You have so much to learn."

.

Michael eases him into the idea with little more than exploration and education first, Michael brushing fingers across his skin and taking note each time a touch causes tension or relaxation, causes a shivery breath or a frown. He explains tickling when Lucifer at first winces and then laughs at too-gentle strokes across his armpit, explains erogenous zones when he hisses in response to Michael's fingers brushing the skin behind his ear or the skin around the base of his wings.

Michael falls silent for a moment when his fingers stroke lightly across the hard curve of Lucifer's erection. "I'll be your first," Michael says after a few gentle strokes. "Are you sure you want this?"

Lucifer answers him with a nod, confirms it with a kiss broken by his own gasp when Michael grips him hard, alternates between pumping up and down and pausing near the top to rub a thumb over the head of his erection with a fast rhythm suggesting practise. Years of practise, maybe, and Lucifer wonders for a moment who with, if Michael has done this with his vessels, or if he's stayed pure, if he's left it to his brothers. Lucifer wonders if Michael's been with any of their sisters, what the difference is in feel and touch and smell; Lucifer's only ever known them by sight.

"There's more than this," Michael says, almost answering his questions without being asked. "There's so much to try, and you'll enjoy it, all of it, because you're one of us,"

The last words hang heavy in the air for a moment, almost a blasphemy, almost a disagreement on Michael's part with God's actions.

Lucifer tightens the grip he has on the back of Michael's head and kisses him again, lets Michael's tongue into his mouth this time now that he expects it, and it's a strange feeling, yes, but it's a _good_ feeling, and he wants to thank Michael for this, for the first thing Lucifer's taken untainted pleasure from in aeons.

Michael pulls away, breathless, his own erection leaking against Lucifer's thigh, and Lucifer lowers his free hand to return the favour Michael's extended him. "I'm still one of you," he repeats back to Michael, before he feels himself tensing up, feels all words robbed from him except those already saved to his lips, Michael, Michael, thank you, and senseless moans.

He comes and feels it through every inch of him, aching with the need of it and relief of it, shaking with the strain and effort demanded for it, and it's hard not to scream into Michael's ears at the feel of his cock being slicked with the seed on Michael's still-moving hands.

Michael wrings him dry before letting him go and he doesn't have the energy to keep returning the favour, can't find the sense to thank Michael for moving to kneel over him so Lucifer can watch him take care of himself, watch the beauty of him in motion, and when Michael leans forward to come so the wet spurts mark Lucifer's neck and lips and cheek, it brings another shudder of pleasure from him he wouldn't have thought himself capable of.

.

Michael slumps at his side afterwards, brushes his fingers across the skin he claimed with his come before sucking them clean. Lucifer almost resents not being offered a taste before finding a still slick patch on Michael's stomach, and he isn't sure if it's his come or Michael's there but he imagines there's little difference between the two.

"Eve found out first, for our sisters," Michael says once breath and sense have both returned. "Then Adam, for us."

Lucifer would sneer at the mention of humans normally, but in this, for once, he suspects he owes them a favour. "And He allowed it?"

"We never asked," Michael says, his smile not entirely innocent. "He never answered."

Lucifer kisses Michael at that, almost chaste this time, another thank you rather than a request. "I underestimated you."

"Likewise," Michael replies. "Hating you on order is harder than I thought."

"We weren't made to hate," Lucifer replies, shrugging. "It takes practise."

Michael rolls onto his front so he can rest; neither of them technically need sleep, but the ability has always been there. In Heaven, they simply never had the opportunity, duties and responsibilities keeping them busy, but down here and with all the time in the universe to waste, there's no sense in spending it all conscious. "Perhaps He thinks I should learn how."

Lucifer's stomach clenches for a moment at the thought of Him, but there's no malice or viciousness in Michael's expression, the words more of an idle musing than real thought for now.

Lucifer stays on his back, uninterested in sleep for the time being, and he closes his eyes to listen to Michael's breathing. His brother is a deep-thinking creature under normal circumstances and the resulting calm shows in his everything - his tone, his manner, his breath. It's a calm that can be infectious to listen to, and Lucifer appreciates it, a salve for nerves long left seared and raw.

"I don't think I could hate you," Michael says after a long moment of quiet, voice tired with the attempt to fall asleep. "Even if He commanded it. Even after centuries."

"You're welcome to never try," Lucifer replies with a smirk, not knowing if Michael sees it, not caring to open his own eyes to find out.

Michael settles again, his breathing shifting gradually as he slips into sleep, and Lucifer stays still, waits to be distracted by his own thoughts.

His only concern, as it turns out, is what Michael dreams of.

He has time enough to find out.

.

The End


End file.
